Read Eleanor of Aquitaine Online
Authors: Marion Meade
Eleanor of Aquitaine (26 page)
Even the lapse of centuries is unable to blur her impetuosity, but in this case, she stilled her impatience. That summer, standing on the brink of a new life, her mood was one of sheer radiant happiness. Just outside Paris, girls and boys were dancing the traditional caroles on the sloping grassy hillsides, clapping and chanting in the warm sunshine. In the cool green garden of the Cite Palace, under the pear and lemon trees and the wooden trellises, the queen’s head buzzed with ecstatic plans for her homecoming. Now, surely, nothing could go wrong.
Unfortunately, we do not know the details of how Eleanor viewed her future. For years she had spent her time waiting—for pregnancy, for the departure of the great Crusade, and then for the leave-taking from the Holy Land, but most agonizing, the wait to be free of Louis Capet. Now that her wait had nearly ended, she must have formed in her imagination a thousand plans and visions, foremost among these the creation of a magnificent court in Poitiers, a mecca for troubadours and poets in the cultured tradition of her grandfather or of Raymond of Antioch, but one still uniquely her own. After her journeys to the East, she knew better than anyone the exquisite possibilities open to a person of determination and imagination, two qualities that she possessed in large amounts. Her nature had never been the compliant female so idealized in medieval times by the ruling class but yet, in reality, so rarely found. From her childhood in William IX’s court, indulged, rarely disciplined, admired by parents and poets, she had developed a strong sense of her own worth, a healthy ego we would term it today, and she had never stopped rebelling against the secondary role foisted upon her as queen of France. After years of being caged, or at least thwarted in her desires, her need for independence converged with an overwhelming passion to rule. Pleasure in life, for the mature Eleanor, meant sovereignty, personal as well as political.
At the same time, with her keen intelligence, she must have been aware of the difficulties facing an unmarried female ruler of a land as violent as Aquitaine. Uneasily she would have recalled the incident of her father’s betrothed being kidnapped by the count of Angoulême—and Emma of Limoges had only been a minor heiress. What was to prevent an ambitious knight, some younger son with no prospects, from boldly snatching her as she rode along a deserted road in Poitou?
To discourage such notions she would need an exceptionally strong bodyguard at all times. Or a husband. Unlike her childhood heroine, Saint Radegonde, who had fled her husband only to embrace the monastic life, Eleanor hungered for a man. Bearing in mind her robust sexual drive, unsatisfied for her entire adult life, there is no doubt that she must have given serious consideration to the question of remarriage. How eagerly she must have looked forward to romantic love and physical enjoyment. At that time, however, had she mentally run down the list of available lords of sufficiently high position, she would have regretfully concluded that not one was simultaneously unmarried, of a suitable age, and appealing. She had no intention of being pushed into another marriage of purely political convenience. When she married, it would be to a man of her own choice, a gallant chevalier on the order of her Uncle Raymond or even Geoffrey Anjou.
Since, at last, Eleanor would be taking her position as sovereign of her own fief, she had an exceptionally strong interest in the activities of Aquitaine’s neighbors, especially its northern neighbors, the Plantagenets. During that summer, people in the Île-de-France spoke of no one but Geoffrey and Henry, against whom Louis was shortly to launch a campaign. The earlier confrontation had been aborted by Suger’s truce, although scattered attacks on Norman castles had continued. But without the abbot’s sagacious counseling, a real war now seemed inevitable. In early summer, Louis mustered his forces on one side of the Norman border, while Geoffrey and Henry assembled their army on the other. To Eleanor, observing these preparations, the dispute may have seemed petty and senseless. Apart from Louis’s natural interest in seeing the Plantagenets ousted from Normandy, an objective that fell into the category of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, because he had already confirmed Geoffrey as duke in 1144, the immediate pretext for hostilities concerned Louis’s seneschal for Poitou. At Montreuil, on the frontier between Poitou and Anjou, Gerald Berlai had erected a well-fortified castle, from which stronghold he had, apparently, harassed the surrounding countryside. This troublesome Berlai so annoyed Geoffrey that he had spent nearly a year besieging Gerald’s supposedly impregnable fortress and finally had managed to capture it, along with Gerald and his family. Gerald’s importance as representative of Capetian royal interests in Poitou failed to deter Geoffrey, who suspected Louis of encouraging his seneschal’s forays into Angevin territory. The count’s summary treatment of his prisoners, incarceration in a maximum-security dungeon, seemed unnecessarily harsh to his contemporaries, and Louis, with nothing better to do at the moment, vowed that he would fight on Berlai’s behalf. Behind this, of course, lay his marked sensitivity to Henry’s neglect in rendering homage for Normandy. This act, by which an overlord formally confirmed a vassal in his possessions, in no way implied that Louis had any authority over Normandy. Nevertheless, feudal custom demanded that the fiction be observed. That the insolent youngster would blithely disregard his obligation implied, to Louis at least, a distinct lack of respect.
If Eleanor believed that fighting the Plantagenets was a waste of time, she needn’t have concerned herself unduly, because the war collapsed in a farce typical of Louis’s military ventures. At the last moment he suddenly developed a fever and, pleading illness, rushed back to the Cite Palace, where he took to his bed for the remainder of the summer. During his convalescence, royal advisers persuaded him that a king who had lately worn the Crusader’s cross should hesitate to shed Christian blood, no doubt a polite way of suggesting that the Plantagenet grasp on Normandy was now too strong to be easily broken. In the end, Louis agreed to call upon Abbot Bernard to mediate a settlement.
In the last week of August, Geoffrey Anjou and his son arrived in Paris. Louis, still confined to bed, managed to rouse himself and greet the visitors, but from the outset, the atmosphere seemed highly un-conducive to reasonable discussion. For one thing, the weather had turned oppressively warm and humid. The Great Hall of the palace felt like an oven, the courtiers sweated, and irritability made everyone’s temper short. Moreover, the spectacle caused by the Plantagenets’ insolent entry into the hall quickly dispelled any hopes of an easy reconciliation. Not only did they bear themselves in a manner shockingly defiant of their overlord—from another point of view their entrance might be considered wonderfully bizarre—but Geoffrey had dragged with him Gerald Berlai, swaddled in chains, to answer charges. This method of displaying a noble prisoner horrified the Franks, especially Abbot Bernard, who intensely disliked Geoffrey and who had already been instrumental in arranging for his excommunication over this matter. Nevertheless, the sight of Berlai in chains moved him to offer a lifting of the ban in exchange for the seneschal’s freedom. Geoffrey’s audacious response favorably impressed Eleanor, who herself was feeling little respect for the Franks or Abbot Bernard at that particular time: He would not release Berlai, Geoffrey stoutly announced to the old man, and for that matter he would have hung him long ago if not for the Truce of God in effect while Louis had been absent in the Holy Land. Furthermore, he did not care whether or not Bernard absolved him. With that, he launched into a public prayer, declaring that if holding Berlai a prisoner were a sin, then he refused to be absolved. This appalling blasphemy catapulted Bernard directly into one of his prophetic trances in which he threatened that Geoffrey would surely meet an early and sudden death and, nothing if not explicit, added that the count would be dead within a month. Geoffrey did not appear to be in the least concerned.
This sort of tempestuous drama, at once stunning and titillating, had not been witnessed in the Capetian court for many years. If Louis needed further proof of the Plantagenet menace, Geoffrey’s performance offered conclusive evidence. Cranky and feverish, the king did nothing to dissipate the tension, and the opening session broke up shortly thereafter when Geoffrey stalked from the hall in a fit of the black bile that the Franks commonly associated with the Angevins. To Eleanor, the scene must have brought back memories of her father and grandfather, neither of whom had been intimidated by the clergy and who, in fact, derived a singular pleasure from tweaking their noses. Clearly Geoffrey, no puppet to be danced on Bernard’s strings, was a man cast from the same mold as her forebears, and she could not have helped but secretly applaud him.
During the parley, Eleanor had an opportunity to study both men. At thirty-nine, Geoffrey still retained the striking physical attributes that had won him the nickname le Bel. But it was Henry who drew her attention. While not as good looking as his father, he had a face and figure that riveted all eyes to him. He gave the impression of having superabundant physical energy, a magnetism that in theatrical parlance would be termed stage presence, and he exuded a rugged maleness. Eleanor’s eyes must have traveled almost greedily over his broad chest and square shoulders, over his arms as muscular as those of a gladiator. His close-cropped reddish hair and the high ruddy color in his freckled face made everyone around him, especially the pale Louis, look frail and sickly in comparison. He had prominent gray eyes, clear and mild when in a peaceable mood but that day bloodshot and flashing like balls of fire, and a gravelly voice, like that of a man who spends most of his time out of doors. There was nothing monkish about him.
It was obvious to Eleanor that here was no mirror of courtly chivalry. On the contrary, from his appearance alone it was almost impossible to distinguish him from a servant. His hands looked rough and coarse, his clothing of good quality but carelessly worn; flung over his shoulders was an absurdly short cape, contrary to all the current styles for men. Apparently he did not care what he looked like, nor what others might think of him. Throughout the meeting, he never once sat down, but stalked about impatiently, as if he begrudged wasting his time on boring trivialities. This was not a man who indulged in coquetry or wooing. One might expect the elegant Eleanor to have dismissed the rough-hewn youth as one of many persons with whom she might have to deal when she resumed control of her duchy. Significantly, she did not.
Despite the angry manner in which the Plantagenets had left the meeting, they did not depart from the court. Their visit lasted several days, perhaps as long as a week, and at the end of it, with no further threats from Bernard, they agreed to release Louis’s seneschal and, far more importantly, surrender a portion of the Vexin and the city of Gisors in exchange for Louis’s recognition of Henry as duke of Normandy. The Vexin, a tract of land on the northeast frontier between Normandy and France, had been a bone of contention between the two powers since the tenth century, when it had been partitioned, the northern portion becoming part of the duchy of Normandy, the southern half part of the demesne lands of the Capetians. Although Henry and his father considered occupation of the Vexin vital to the security of Normandy, they had nevertheless already relinquished half of this buffer zone to Louis in 1144 as the price of Geoffrey’s recognition as duke. Now, much to the amazement of the Franks, they volunteered to part with the remainder. Such totally baffling behavior was attributed to Bernard’s dire warnings; on the face of it, the only possible conclusion to be drawn was that Bernard had worked another miracle. As Eleanor knew, this was not the case at all.
That something of significance happened during those few days in August would in time become clear. That Eleanor decided to marry Henry, and that he eagerly fell in with the idea, would also become clear. But why and how this decision came about remained a mystery to twelfth-century historians. William of Newburgh tried to explain it this way: “For it is said that while she was still married to the king of the Franks she had aspired to marriage with the Norman duke whose manner of life suited better with her own, and for this reason she had desired and procured the divorce.” Apparently discontent with such a superficial analysis. William goes on to add that Eleanor “was greatly offended with the king’s conduct. even pleading that she had married a monk, not a king.” Newburgh, who wrote his history some forty years later while canon of an Augustinian priory, was a chronicler of sound judgment, but as a churchman, he could only hint at the underlying reason for a liaison between two such unlikely individuals as Eleanor and Henry. On the other hand, Walter Map, a courtier and clerk in Henry’s household some years later, did not hesitate to repeat salacious gossip, but even so, his analysis probably came closer to the truth when he wrote that Eleanor “cast glances of unholy love” upon Henry. The whys and wherefores of sexual attraction, often discounted by historians, proved to be of overriding significance in the case of Eleanor and Henry.
We know nothing about the precise circumstances of their first tryst in the Cite Palace beyond the fact that it was initiated by Eleanor and must have been intense and conclusive. Perhaps taking advantage of Louis’s incapacitation, Eleanor might have sent a trusted servingwoman through the dark, silent passageways with a message that brought Henry to her chamber after the palace had fallen asleep. Perhaps it did not happen that way. But in whatever manner they managed to meet, it was accomplished so skillfully, so secretly, that no one in the Cite Palace knew of it, an extraordinary feat considering that privacy in medieval castles was virtually nonexistent. Later, it would be said by their contemporaries that Henry debauched and filched his overlord’s wife from beneath the king’s own nose. If any seduction took place at this time, and it may well have, it would have been Eleanor who did the seducing, for the eighteen-year-old boy awakened an overwhelming feeling in her. Neither the eleven-year difference in their ages nor the obvious fact that he was no chivalrous knight with pretty speeches for the ladies could quench her longing. She was ready and ripe to be undone by a truly lascivious man. That the physical attraction was mutual is strikingly evident from the eagerness with which Henry responded to her advances, and perhaps it was to him that Eleanor remarked that she had married a monk.
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